Always rethinking the Southeast Asian past

After getting distracted by certain issues in the opening passage of an essay by Trần Quốc Vượng on Vietnamese culture (see the last post below), today I read through the rest of this essay.

The argument that Trần Quốc Vượng makes in this essay is that Vietnamese scholars in the past (before the 20th century) were so infatuated with Chinese culture that they did not recognize the distinctness of Vietnamese culture. However, according to Trần Quốc Vượng, in the second half of the twentieth century Vietnamese Marxist scholars succeeded in bringing to light the fact that the roots of Vietnamese culture can be found in the first millennium BC (the Đông Sơn culture), before the area of the Red River Delta came under the control of the Han Dynasty, and this original culture persisted in the villages after the elite later adopted various aspects of Chinese culture.

Trần Quốc Vượng then goes on to make his own argument that this original culture can be traced back even earlier, to the Neolithic period (the Hòa Bình and Bắc Sơn cultures). In making this argument he cites the work of various Western scholars to demonstrate 1) that the Neolithic was a very important period and that 2) culture is influenced by the environment. He does this in order to make the point that the environment of Vietnam influenced the type of culture that was created during the Neolithic there, and that this cultural tradition persisted through the ages, up until at least the 18th and 19th centuries.

In doing so, however, Trần Quốc Vượng misrepresents what Western scholars actually wrote about.

In arguing for the importance of the Neolithic, Trần Quốc Vượng cites a passage in Tristes Tropiques, a famous work by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, as follows:

“One of the most creative phases in human history took place with the onset of the neolithic era: agriculture and the domestication of animals are only two of the developments which may be traced to this period. It must have had behind it thousands of years during which small societies of human beings were noting, experimenting, and passing on to one another the fruits of their knowledge. The very success of this immense enterprise bears witness to the rigor and the continuity of its preparation, [at a time when writing was quite unknown].”

Trần Quốc Vượng then states, without providing any evidence or citing any source to support his claim, that “Every archaeologist, ethnographer and historian knows that the lifestyle of the Neolithic, in its basic form, continued to be maintained in the lifestyle of villages of humanity all the way until the 18th and 19th centuries.”

I put the phrase “at a time when writing was quite unknown” at the end of the above quote from Tristes Tropiques in brackets as Trần Quốc Vượng did not include that phrase in his quote. However it is important because in this passage Lévi-Strauss was talking about his theory of writing, not the Neolithic period. What Lévi-Strauss argued was that one would think that the invention of writing must have created massive changes because people could record more information than they could remember and that this could enable them to do things that they could not do before writing was invented, and yet a change as important as the Neolithic Revolution occurred before writing was invented.

So Lévi-Strauss starts looking at other ways in which writing was important.

He ultimately argues that what is really significant about writing is that it seems to have appeared around the world in connection with cities and empires. In these contexts, Lévi-Strauss argues, what was really significant about writing was that it enabled the exploitation of the common people.

To quote, Lévi-Strauss stated that, “This exploitation made it possible to assemble workpeople by the thousand and set them tasks that taxed them to the limits of their strength. . . If my hypothesis is correct, the primary function of writing, as a means of communication, is to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.”

My point here is that Lévi-Strauss wrote about writing, not about the Neolithic period. So his book is therefore not a source to cite about the Neolithic period. It is a work to cite if you are researching about theories about the emergence of writing.

However, Trần Quốc Vượng cites this work to note that the Neolithic era was one of the most creative periods in human history, and then he makes an ungrounded claim that the lifestyle of the Neolithic continued in villages up until the 19th century.

Trần Quốc Vượng then goes on to cite Marx and Engels in the same way. He cites their works out of context to make his own argument, an argument that is not related to what Marx and Engels actually wrote about.

First Trần Quốc Vượng cites a passage from Marx’s Capital in which Marx was talking about the “social process of production” that takes place under the “capitalist process of production.” Here Marx states that the “social process of production” took place “under specific historical and economic production relations” and that “the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure.”

This is not easy to understand, but (as far as I can tell) Marx was essentially trying to explain how society is the product of the economic relations between people.

Trần Quốc Vượng then cites a letter by Engels in which he stated that “By economic relations, which we regard as the determining basis of the history of society, we understand the way in which human beings in a definite society produce their necessities of life and exchange the products among themselves (in so far as division of labor exists). Consequently the whole technique of production and transportation is therein included. . . Under economic relations are included further, the geographical foundations . . . and also, naturally, the external milieu surrounding this social form.”

Like Marx, Engels was talking here about economic relations, and he made the point that geography plays a role in the economic relations between people.

After quoting the comments by Marx and Engels on economic relations, Trần Quốc Vượng then states that “Therefore, when we talk about the special features of Vietnamese culture [!!!], we have to search for their roots in the Neolithic, the period when agriculture and villages emerged, and we must pay attention to the geographic foundation and the natural environment that produced those special characteristics of the culture. . .”

This conclusion that Trần Quốc Vượng comes to has nothing to do with what Lévi-Strauss, Marx and Engels talked about in the passages that Trần Quốc Vượng cited. Instead, Trần Quốc Vượng just takes the fact that Lévi-Strauss mentioned “the Neolithic,” that Marx mentioned “society,” and that Engels mentioned “geographic foundation,” to support his own un-documented idea that Vietnamese “culture” (a topic which none of these scholars talked about in the cited passages) formed during the Neolithic and was influenced by geography and the environment. And then he adds to this his own idea which “every archaeologist, ethnographer and historian knows” (and I guess that’s why there was no need to provide any evidence to support this idea. . .) that the lifestyle of the Neolithic was maintained in villages up until the 19th century.

On the surface, this essay looks good. Trần Quốc Vượng cites the work of famous Western scholars and makes an argument.

But if you actually look at what those scholars wrote about, and then compare that with what Trần Quốc Vượng argues, then his argument falls apart. It is not supported by the work of the scholars he cites. It is just an argument that he himself made up, without any serious documentation or evidence.

When you cite the works of scholars, you cite them for the ideas that those scholars put forth. Marx and Engels talked about economic relations in the passages that Trần Quốc Vượng cited, not about the role that geography and the environment might (or might not) play in shaping culture. Lévi-Strauss wrote about his ideas about the emergence of writing in the passage that Trần Quốc Vượng cited, ideas that had come to Lévi-Strauss while conducting anthropological research in South America. The Neolithic period is merely something that he mentioned in passing in this book. He did not put forth ideas about the Neolithic period, and was not an expert on the Neolithic period.

In citing the works of Western scholars for ideas that those scholars did not put forth, Trần Quốc Vượng produced an article that looks like it must be valid, but it’s not.

15 thoughts on “Trần Quốc Vượng and the Citing of Western Scholarship”

There are interesting implications to his claims. Vietnamese villages remained neolithic, i.e., remained frozen in amber since 500 BCE or maybe earlier. The villages become a time machine. Any observations one makes about contemporary village life fully tells one about the social and material life of 2500 or more years ago. This assumption becomes important because the historic annals tells us that this region was incorporated into the administration of the Chinese empire and of course susceptible to their influence. (And there is indisputable evidence that the post-neolithic strata of society was highly influenced by Chinese civilization). But the villages remained unchangingly neolithic and preserved an essential Vietnamese culture, pure and untouched by Chinese culture. If village life changed or adapted to outside circumstances (to non-Vietnamese circumstances) then the continuity with bốn nghìn năm văn hiến is lost.

It’s a fascinatingly absurd argument – that the people one sees transplanting rice stalks are essentially identical to the people doing so in 500 BCE. This house of cards is built on a belief that 90 percent of Vietnamese had been continuously living in the New Stone Age.

Despite quoting a couple a scholars from outside the bamboo hedge (quoting them out of context as you note) it seems that Trần Quốc Vượng’s scholarship wants to remain unchanged and not adapted to a larger, dynamic, post-neolithic world. I’m not familiar with the education he received. But it’s hard to see how his approach would find any foothold in the world of peer-reviewed scholarship.

I think the key is that his writing is not meant to convince a skeptical reader (as “academic” writing is supposed to do), but instead is meant to tell people something that they want to hear (“we are great”), in ways that they might not have heard it before.

And yea, even if it was the case that there is something important that persists from the Neolithic to the 19th century, what exactly are the manifestations of that “something” in the 19th century? And how do those manifestations matter?

And if Vietnamese culture and Chinese culture are different because Vietnamese culture emerged in the Neolithic from the wet-rice environment of the Red River delta while Chinese culture emerged in the Neolithic from the sorghum/wheat environment of the Yellow River valley, then what about the Yangzi River valley/delta? Was that totally “non-Chinese”? If so, what happened when Chinese started growing rice there? Was the Neolithic sorghum/wheat imprint on their culture already so strong that it persisted in the villages south of the Yangzi when Chinese moved there?

As you say, it’s a fascinatingly absurd argument, but to readers it probably felt good (or perhaps still does), and I suppose that we can conclude from that that feelings are more powerful than logic.

According to the article “sinocentrism “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism , as late as the 19th century , the Nguyên dynasty saw themselves as ” Han ” people . They never seemed to adhere to that fictional history of ” chinese ” 1000 – year domination ..
Is there any account that before the Nguyên dynasty , the preeceding dynasties believed in that reading ?
It is a huge mystery for me : who and when was that hoax-story concocted ?
And most puzzling to say the leaasst , how did it take such a tight hold of the VN people’s mind , to get TQVuong and his likes striving desperately to create a counter – history , a counter-culture , an ” essential ” VN culture , dating back to the prehistoric timess ?

1) French writers in the late 19th/early 20th saw “colonization” in the past.
2) Meanwhile, I think calling their administration a “protectorate” etc. made it easy for people who had not thought of “Chinese colonization” in the past to see the Tang-era “protectorate of Annam” as an example of colonial domination.

You bring up a good point, and I would like to figure it out in detail, but my gut feeling is that it has its origins in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and emerged in the intellectual exchange between French and Vietnamese scholars/intellectuals.

Normally , when you propose to people a good story where they would have an exalted role , they would glaldly accept it . But a story of 1000 years servitude , it terribly hurts , shames , traumatizes . How come the VN people and VN scholars / intellectuals could have taken it passionately to their bosom .
The trauma , shame , humiliiation make them lose their sense and pushes them to extreme attitudes and write many nonsenses , fictionals histories , contrived rationalizations to create a VN culture cardboard contraption . Each time they have a conflict with the “Bac quôc” , the conflict gets more acute by the trauma , hurt , hatred borne of that false memory syndrome .
Maybe the taking hold of the hoax- story on VN minds is due to the cultural uprooting induced among other factors by the eradication of Han characters and the imposition of so called quôc ngu . it is as if VN people got lobotomized and forgot half or more of their cultural and historical memory . That would be a new branch of history ” psycho-socio –
history” to study .
As a political and military commentator W. Lind said ” when you have destroyed the culture of a people , you can lead them down every road you wish , you can feed them any kind of ” hoaxes ” or ” canards ” .

I read your articles about ” victim narratives ” ; if I understand , VN and chinese governments take advantage of recent past history to propagandize their people and foster nationalism .
But their maneuvers have at least a basis of reality ,are based on historical facts.
For my part , I’m still looking for an answer to a puzzling ,to say the least , enigma . How did the VN people and the government and their erudite
scholars ( like Lê thành Khôi , Cao thê’ Huy , TQVuong and maybe the Nôm preservation society ) fall in for that fiction of 1000 year domination ?

I think the simple answer is that it is nationalism, and the particular form that nationalism has taken in Vietnam.

In the early twentieth century, when the idea of nationalism was first getting tested in Vietnam, there were people who glorified the Vietnamese past by pointing out how the Vietnamese had conquered the Chams.

Indeed, if you were to look at all of Vietnamese history, I think you would find that “beating up on Champa” is a much more common theme than “resisting Chinese aggression.”

But it’s the latter point, and fear of “Chinese domination,” that has become “common knowledge.”

Why is that the case? Well, from 1945 to 1979 a lot of time was spent trying to get people to unite together and fight. One of the ways that you do this is by trying to get people to think that this is what they as a people are all about.

It’s this paradox where people are told that their past is all about what they are not doing in the present.

We can see this in Thailand. The nationalist narrative of Thai history emerged in the early 20th century, and it was all about how a strong Thailand has always defended itself against the Burmese. It’s not a coincidence that this view of the past emerged right at the time when Thailand was weak and was losing land and power to foreigners (like the French).

As for why intellectuals participate in this? I think it has a lot to do with the environment that they are in. But yea, if an intellectual has a long career, you’d think that at some point s/he’d write something that would reveal a more sophisticated way of viewing the past. . .

_ nationalism as answer is most unsatisfactory . As I said , one is willing ta accept a glorious myth but a so long history of slavery is deeply unpalatable , repulsive .
_ in 1945 , anger is aimed at French colonialism . How did the myth take shape and take hold on VN minds in such short a time period ?
Anyhow , basically , since centuries VN people were never anti – chinese , on the contrary , VN intellectuals since old times look up to chinese ones for guidance : cf the contacts between Ph bôi Châu and Liang chi Chao , VN nationalists ” VN quôc dân dang” modeling their party after the Kuo min Tang, VN going to study in Whampoa military academy , feudal times VN rulers unhesitatinly calling ” chinese ” suzerains for help …. and countless other examples
_ as a hunch, according to my experience , the myth took hold in South VN
under Ngô dinh Diêm ‘s rule and it comes from three sources :
1) the history is really the history of VN catholics , reeling under centuries of oppression by “chinese ” i.e. Nguyên rulers
2 ) the famed Tran trong Kim ‘s history book ” VN su luoc ” which wrongly traced back VN history to mythical times with Hung Vuong , Hai Bà trung , etc and listed 3 periods of Bac thuôc . Pr Kim surely meant ” thuôc ” as appartenance but the meaning was distorted to domination by the Ngô regime . This book is used still nowadays in secondary education in today VN
with the domination meaning ( most intriguing , knowing the decades of VN – Chinese communists years of friendship )
[ Contrariwise , Pr Kim wrote in another famed book ” Nho giao ” , in the chapter ” Nho giao tai VN ” that ” our ancestors motsly nobility and scholars
migrated to VN after the fall of Tang dynasty and mingled with the local ethnies ” ]
3 ) 3rd source , the most outlandish hypothesis , I must confess ,is the song written by Pham Duy ” Gia Tài Của Mẹ ” which begin”s by the words
“Một ngàn năm nô lệ giặc tầu một trăm năm đô hộ giặc tây ”
“A thousand years slavery under chinese pirates , 100 years of domination by french pirates ”
The song is fairly famous , with martial rythm and patriotic undertones , it takes hold of people’s minds

_ erratum : the song was written by Trinh công Son in 1965
_ so it’s still a mystery , how such a toxic potion has been swallowed by the VN educated people and and impregnated their minds in such a short time duration , 100 years , it seems .

Interestingly, TC Son grew up in a Minh Huong village in Central Vietnam (Thua Thien province). So we may think that he was a Minh Huong descendant.
In the early twentieth century, Mekong delta used to be one of the major oversea Chinese concentration areas in South Eastern Asia. I am not sure what was the percentage of Chinese at that time, I believe it could be as high as 10% or higher.
Today, there are about one percent (1 million) of Hoa people in Vietnam, about half is in HC Minh city, another half is mostly in Mekong delta.
So where have all the descendants of the Chinese in Mekong delta gone? Mostly they have been assimilated and become Vietnamese and they keep a low profile about their Chinese heritage.

“So where have all the descendants of the Chinese in Mekong delta gone?”
Many are in places like the US too. Many of the “boat people” in the late 1970s/early 1980s were ethnic Chinese, or “mixed” families of Chinese and Vietnamese.

Let us consider an alternative explanation as to why TQV had written the essay under discussion. We may speculate that he was way too smart and knowledgeable to actually believe in what he wrote. His references to Marx and Engels, for instance, seem wholly obligatory, comparable to references to Confucius and Mencius by Confucian candidates composing exam papers. This brings us, then, to a even more fundamental problem with TQV: that he was an scholar who did not belong to what another prominent Vietnam historian has called “la tradition antique des historiens dignes de ce nom, celle qui conduit au refus de se plier devant la force.” An accommodationist, TQV was disinclined to speak truth to the Communist power under whose rule he had to publish or perish.

Though deeply unflattering to TQV himself, this explanation obviously also raises uncomfortable questions about the professional courage of his critics, especially those who are enjoying academic freedom in the West today. When push comes to shove, that is to say, when this freedom, for whatever reason, is suddenly taken away, how many among them would turn out to be Spartaci worthy of the tradition mentioned above?

1) I find that a large amount of the 20th-century scholarship from/about Vietnam tells us more about the 20th century that it does about Vietnam. TQV’s writings are a case in point.
2) So what can we do with the writings of TQV or Chavannes or Aurousseau? We can’t really build on them, as they are too flawed. What we can do is to at least make it clear in what ways they are flawed so that people who want to create something more solid can understand what not to do. Or we can use them to understand the 20th century and the various predicaments that people found themselves in and the ways that they dealt with it (as you point out here).
3) As for what those who enjoy academic freedom in the West today would do if push came to shove, I never make predictions about the future. As an historian I only make predictions about the past.
All I can say is that we all live in the present, and we should all take advantage of whatever we have to try to make things better. If someone has the privilege to critique, then critique. If someone doesn’t, then s/he should be honest about what s/he thinks with people in private (which is perhaps what TQV did), in the hope that others will later have the ability to say what s/he can’t.